Notes From a Tool User - An Agile Blog

When trying to instil a new habit with a team I often find it useful to add a new question (or two) to the daily standup. Perhaps the team needs to pay more attention to Code Smells or Unit Testing. In those cases I ask team members to mention one thing they discovered (or better improved) related to that idea during standup everyday. My goal is to make spotting these issues a daily habit, even when they can’t be fixed right mentioning them raises awareness. Non-coders please reinterpret questions 4 and 5 in your own context.

As a reminder here are the updated questions:

What did you complete yesterday?

What do you commit to today?

What are your impediments/obstacles?

What Code Smell/Missing Unit Test/… did you spot yesterday?

What improvement did you make to the code yesterday?

Even with the extra 2 questions teams should easily finish their stand-ups in fifteen minutes or less. I recommend that discussion be left until after the stand-up so people who’re not interested can sit down.

An additional trick I saw someone at my client us: pass the questions round on a piece of paper. You don’t need to read them but just holding the piece of paper is good reminder and helps people remain focused.

BTW I’ve very quiet recently in part because I’m busy with client work and in part because just having become a CST I’ve decided to revamp my training materials yet again. More details coming soon.

PA – words on a page are very difficult in that they don’t convey all of the meaning.

If a ScrumMaster or I as an outside coach impose Questions #1 and #2 you’re right that would be micromanagement. New Agile teams are often struggling to learn how to make and meet **small** commitments. In their case I ask this idea and other options and ask what they think will meet their needs. So if they do this they choose not me.

Questions #4 and #5 can be phrased any way the team wants forward/backward looking. Rather than impose again I ask the team what will work for them. Backward looking questions give the team the advantage of finding something small to celebrate everyday. The point isn’t to replace the retrospective but to celebrate small successes in achieving our goals. Its easier to make improvements when your peers recognize that they happened and celebrate in some small way.